The door to adventure!

After yet another delicious breakfast of meat, cereal, and coffee (no danish in Eichstatt), we had Leon the Gray drive us up to the fortress we saw on the hill the day before. The going was steep, but he made it.

At the top of the hill we drove through the old gate, into the modern parking lot. Signs posted around the premises stated that there was a fee to tour the fortress itself, but we weren't really interested in that. We were hoping to actually frolic in the fields and hill behind it, but that seemed like it was going to be a bust as well. Everything was walled off, probably due to the hotel that was also up there.

We had decided to leave and maybe check something else out, when I spotted a small door in the fortress wall near where we had parked. The door was open, and there was a dirt path leading away from it, along the outside of the wall. Hopes raised, we follow the path through a small forest (with the River Atlmuhl below us), until we emerged into the mythical past!

Ye olde lands of old

Before us lay lush green rolling hills, with mountains and a fortress in the distance. It was quite a surprise to find all this nature through that little door in a brick wall. We hiked to the top of the highest hill, where we found some sort of weird chapel up there. We were unable to figure out if it was a public building (and thus with public facilities) so that would have to wait until later.

Hiking back we did see a few cars driving around on our mythical hill, so that sort of ruined the aesthetic a bit, but otherwise it was a fine time indeed. We found Leon again through our little door, and drove him back to his parking lot.

Standard neighborhood fish spawning river

Next was our standard tour of the entire city in epic hike form, and this hike did not disappoint. We saw ornate churches, quaint little neighborhoods that had their own fish spawning river, apartments built into the city wall, tinyphants, and another hidden path in the hills above the city wall. That was pretty neat, but I was pretty bushed at that point, so I sat on a bench while Lin-Wei did a little of her own exploring.

We also drove to some crazy sculpture park situated in even more lush green hills. Somehow I was even able to get 10 minutes to lie down on the grass and contemplate what I had gotten myself into. But just as I was about to reach some conclusions, I was told that it was time to move on. But not before getting a picture of one of those fields of yellow flowers we were seeing everywhere. (We learned later that they were probably being grown for the production of ethanol).

Can you find the prettiest flower in this picture?

For some reason we went back to the fortress and did a tour around the old walls. It must have made sense at the time... I was feeling a little salty after all that hiking, so Lin-Wei bribed me with ice cream.

For dinner we went back to our favorite Italian place for some more spaghetti bolognse (dang that was good, and cheap too) and expensive coke.

That evening was spent trying to figure out where we would go next on this unprecedented free week. How about starting with trying to find some Roman ruins, followed by a main course of medieval castle, and dessert on to the ski resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we can explore the summit of the highest peak in Germany? Alright, well let's get to it then!

To Harburg!